Indium tin oxide (ITO) thin film fabricated by indium–tin–organic sol including ITO nanoparticle

In this paper, indium tin oxide (ITO) thin film was fabricated by indium–tin–organic sol including ITO nanoparticle, and optical transmittance was characterized. ITO nanoparticle was designed to dope 10 wt.% SnO2 into In2O3 lattice, and was synthesized under low temperature not exceeding 300 °C in order to make ultrafine sized particle. As a result, the synthesized ITO nanoparticle showed ultrafine size about 5 nm and high specific surface area of 117 m2/g. Also, (2 2 2) preferred orientation was observed from X-ray diffracted peak. Then, using the particles and indium–tin–organic sol, ITO thin film was fabricated. The indium–tin–organic sol was made using organic solution in which indium and tin acetic reagents were dissolved into an organic solvent. The ITO nanoparticle was included into indium–tin–organic sol in order to deposit ITO sol thin film by spin coating. The ITO mixture sol was spin-coated on a glass substrate of which area was 7 × 7 cm, and heat-treated at 500 °C. As a result, the optimized ITO sol–gel thin film could be successfully fabricated with good optical transmittance over 83% and electrical resistance less than 7 × 103 Ω by including the 0.6 wt.% ITO nanoparticle into the ITO sol.